Beloved SF homelessness nonprofit scales back as...

1of2Volunteer Kumar Mooroteea cleans a facility set up by Lava Mae, which has provided more than 75,000 showers to homeless people since it began in 2014.Photo: Photos by Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle 2015

2of2Doniece Sandoval is scaling back Lava Mae but plans to help other groups put the concept to work.Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle 2015

One of the most notable, beloved nonprofits serving San Francisco homeless people is scaling way back this week — largely because of how exhausting it is to serve a population that just keeps ballooning.

Lava Mae, which has provided showers and toilets for homeless people in those familiar blue trailers, will wrap up service this week in the Bayview, Mission and Haight. It will retain just one weekly shift in the city: Tuesday mornings outside the Main Library.

It will be using two trailers, down from a peak of six. It will serve a total of 8,000 people a year, down from 12,000 and see its staff drop to 11 from 22, but it plans to find employees similar jobs at other nonprofits.

And its creative, hard-charging founder, Doniece Sandoval, is stepping down as Lava Mae’s CEO. Friday will be her last day.

“It has been the single most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done — rewarding on so many levels,” she said. “But for the first three years, I was working 100 hours a week. ... When you’re working with vulnerable populations, the stress and the responsibility increases 100-fold. ... I’m pretty exhausted and needing some self-care.”

The 57-year-old former public relations executive had the idea for Lava Mae in 2013 after passing a filthy homeless woman who was crying and saying she’d never be clean. San Francisco, one of the richest cities in the world, offered just 16 showers for its thousands of homeless people — and far too few public toilets, as well.

Sandoval in 2014 launched Lava Mae — similar to “wash me” in Spanish, but made to sound like a girl’s name — bringing old Muni buses or mobile trailers with showers, toilets and a chance at dignity to homeless people around the city. It expanded to the East Bay and Los Angeles and hit its end-of-2020 goal of providing 75,000 showers to 30,000 homeless people 16 months early.

So why scale back now? There are several reasons.

Moving forward, the nonprofit is rebranding as Lava Mae X to signify its plan to become a nonprofit accelerator, training groups around the world to set up their own mobile showers and toilets.

The idea of “radical hospitality” — treating society’s poorest, often shunned people with great care — is Lava Mae’s biggest contribution, Sandoval said, and it’s important to help replicate it. She said Lava Mae has received 4,250 inquiries from cities, nonprofits, refugee organizations and individuals around the world, and shifting focus will help more of those groups get off the ground.

In addition, Lava Mae has found a similar program — Dignity on Wheels in East Palo Alto — to take over some of its weekly shifts, though there will be a gap after this week. Dignity on Wheels will provide shower service to the city’s new “vehicle triage center” for homeless RV dwellers near the Balboa Park BART station and, eventually, start taking over the shifts Lava Mae is giving up, Sandoval said.

Lava Mae will continue to offer 10 one-day “pop-up care villages” — including haircuts, clothing donations, job help and other offerings alongside the shower stalls — every year. And it is partnering with the San Francisco Unified School District to offer two aimed specifically at public school families next year.

Sandoval will still advise Lava Mae X one day a week through 2020 and has ideas to use her marketing and branding skills to “shatter stereotypes and address NIMBYism” though she’s not divulging details yet.

She said it’s bittersweet to know her idea helped so many people and yet the number of those living on the streets of San Francisco has only risen. This year’s homeless count found 8,011 unhoused people in the city — just over 1,000 more than were found in the 2013 count.

Sandoval hoped Lava Mae would provide a gateway to more help. By helping people shower and get clean, they could then think about looking for a job or an apartment. And some have, but the population has spiked.

“I thought naively we would be part of helping reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness,” she said. “To know that now the numbers are higher than they’ve ever been is really devastating.”

The numbers are devastating, yes. But Sandoval and her Lava Mae team should feel gratified they gave all those people three things that shouldn’t be so hard to access in our rich city: a shower, a toilet and the feeling that somebody cares.

* * *

In brighter news, almost nothing makes me happier than making a difference with this column. And thanks to you, dear readers, we’ve made a big difference.

Last week, I highlighted the Gubbio Project, which facilitates “sacred sleep” for homeless people at St. Boniface Church in the Tenderloin and St. John the Evangelist in the Mission. Homeless people, who often struggle to fall into deep sleep on the sidewalks, can enter either church each weekday at 6 a.m. to stretch out and sleep, no questions asked.

The boiler at St. Boniface has gone out, making the drafty church even chillier than usual. The Gubbio Project needs blankets, socks and other toiletries to get through the winter stretch. I encouraged readers to answer that call — and, boy, did you.

“I’ve been really moved by San Franciscans’ generosity,” said Shannon Eizenga, executive director of the Gubbio Project.

One woman walked into St. Boniface last Tuesday and handed over a check for $5,000, saying she’d read the column. And that wasn’t even the biggest check, though it was the biggest delivered in person. Eizenga said the nonprofit has received at least $65,000 in new donations since last week.

“That’s to say nothing of the thousands of blankets and socks and hygiene items that came in,” she said. “I’ll bet we’ve got at least 1,000 blankets, if not more. And socks? Somewhere in the same ballpark.”

She said she’s gotten a lot of new visitors at the church, too.

“We get people walking in and saying, ‘I read the article, and I want to do something. Here is a check.’ Or, ‘Here is a box of hats,’” she continued.

She said the most unexpected part of the past week has been the calls from community groups and churches saying they read the column and want to offer the same service for homeless people where they live.

“They’re saying, ‘We want to do something like this. How do we do this?’” she said. “From the Midwest, the East Coast, here in California. I got some calls from Italy. Kind of all over the place.”

“I’ve been really moved by the generosity of folks,” she said. “It’s something tangible like, ‘I know my gift in this specific way is going to make a difference and is going to help.’ I think we’re all pretty hungry for that.”

We sure are. If you’d like to keep the goodwill going, visit www.thegubbioproject.org to learn how to donate or volunteer. Good job, everybody!

Heather Knight is a columnist working out of City Hall and covering everything from politics to homelessness to family flight and the quirks of living in one of the most fascinating cities in the world. She believes in holding politicians accountable for their decisions or, often, lack thereof – and telling the stories of real people and their struggles.